Stay the Night
by AvianInk
Summary: Following Bruce's return to Earth (and the ensuing devastation), Natasha confronts him about leaving just as they were going to seize their window. Two years of questions without answers, frustration, looking into the void of space, and echoing thoughts thoughts arise. At the end of it all, he asks a critical question - does she want him to leave?


**A.N.** Happy Fanfic Friday (for the first time in like 2 years)! I'm back on my bullshit with Brucenat.

If you have not seen Infinity War, you are not allowed to read this. Except I can't make decisions for you or tell you what to do. So, if you have not seen Infinity War, pretty please with Mark Ruffalo's hair and puppies and a really fuzzy blanket on top - do not read further. I promise, you're probably not missing out on that much.

As always, the insecure writer in me hopes that this is somewhat decent!

 _Stay the Night_

When she decided to do this, she also decided to resist the urge to barge in, no announcement of her entry besides her boots on stone in the all too echoic halls. There would be no hiding from her this time — not after weeks of waiting, months of hoping, all laced with sickening rationalization, new nightmares to add to her collection. Not after everything finally became okay but not being completely _right_. Events in her life never unfolded into dainty blossoms or happy endings, but that was something she'd accepted long ago. Wrong or right didn't define her formative years, it was always survival. That went unquestioned, ruthlessly obeyed, until sometime in the past four years. After that, no longer was she content with cold survival.

Instead of barging in, in spite of the programmed instincts, she knocks.

Wakanda's doors bore no peepholes. This is a land of neighborly faith and trust. Now, this is a land without a leader as well.

There's a scuffle, the silence of hesitation. It'd be impossible to hear; nevertheless, she listens for breathing.

The door yawns open, reveals the shadow that had hovered somewhere above for the past two years.

"Natasha." Bruce says, a smile crinkling his cheeks, clashing with the tangle of confusion in his gaze.

If only she had a gun, she might shoot him. If they could flip back a few chapters in their story, she'd kiss him. If she really didn't give a damn, like she'd tell herself over and over on the rare nights where she woke from visions of his blood splattered across the insides of her eyelids, then she'd yell. Maybe she wouldn't even be here. But she is, and she is doing none of the above.

"Haven't seen much of you since the end of the world." _Are you avoiding me?_ That was the real question; every iteration came out wrong in her head. It wouldn't calculate correctly. Friends, allies, half the universe just perished, and she's fixated on this?

Yes. She is. As much as she tried to ignore it, explain it, will it away, there had been an undeniable fear as familiar faces turned to ash. Companions reduced to dust, then to nothing at all. In an ideal, equal reality, everyone's relationship would bear the same weight, inflict the same loss. This was the farthest from ideal, though, and in those horrible moments when no one was safe — when she lost the people, the organization, the friends who had become her everything — there was an undeniable surge of dread for the man beneath the green, the shadow. He couldn't go, not when he just emerged from a dream on another planet.

His chin dips to confirm her suspicion, even though he simply says, "I'm sorry."

"For what?" The time for gentle had withered, as had the period for hinting, insinuation. This was not an era of tentative approaches — that died with this war. The only thing they had time for — _she_ had time for — was utter honesty. "For hiding from me or Hulk's hiatus? Or leaving in the first place?" That one was less of a question, more a buried answer.

"Nat—"

"Don't placate me. I'm not here to be soothed." This was poking leaks in her plan, in the aloof dialogue she'd crafted. Regardless, she ran with it, against the grain of what her existence trained her to do. "We all want to hide. Then we can pretend like this never happened. We don't have the luxury of running away. Not anymore."

Something cracks, shifts how he holds revelations and worry on his shoulders. Meek, he asks, "Will you — do you…" Without another word, he urges the door further open and aligns himself with it, an ashamed acquiescence.

The door breezes shut after her, enclosing them in his temporary space. Then they're facing one another, closer than a galaxy apart, but somehow more distant than Earth's dual poles. The feeling of him floats up from afar, ripples over her, leaves her reaching yet unable to grab him, shake him, tell him everything he missed hearing in the months of absence. He's standing right in front of her, and she's missing him.

That doesn't evoke a tearful response, like it possibly would in other people — normal people. Her heart rate doesn't rise, but the blood pumps through her a little harder, less a steady stream and more a deluge. Air sizzles out of each exhale like embers spitting out from an innocuous bushfire. She was trained a killer, but seldom has she been a brewing catastrophe. It's a horrible, feral sensation that she tries to tamper down with habitual aloofness with mediocre success.

"You left." It comes out somewhere between a statement of fact and an accusation. Trying to remain even, she follows with, "Why?"

He implores, "That wasn't my decision."

The domineering nature of the Hulk made that a strong likelihood. Nevertheless, it was never the Hulk with total, all-consuming control over his body.

"Hulk got on a Quinjet and left." That she gave him. "But it took you two years to come back."

He looks at her as though she held a lighter to his scrapbooks (if he had them) — the archives of his memories, including their brief moment together. "You think I'd abandon you like that?"

She shrugs, donning a pained half-smile. It's a bittersweet thing, and it turns old scars into fresh scabs. Gentle, but true, she responds, "You did."

It's like leaving a dog in the rain and watching through a screen as a downpour beats down. But Bruce isn't some innocent puppy, he's a person who once flattered her, took up the fight for her, and who also hurt her. Of that last reality, they are both agonizingly aware. "I didn't want to. I didn't choose that," he insists, soft. "The other guy took control — complete control — for two years. I didn't even realize how much time had passed until Thor told me. I wasn't aware of anything for two years. It was like my mind was in a coma while my body was being borrowed."

Someone else might offer their sympathies, perhaps an apology. It wasn't that she's unaware of the dissociative deal he endured, not to mention the reconciliation work he had to do now. However, that fact didn't erase the time she spent dwelling, enduring painful, questioning cognizance. She says as much, "And I was here. It doesn't change what I went through."

"Natasha—"

"I told you, I don't want you to placate me." In the pause she evoked, her gut churned, unlocked, and sputtered ashes that kicked up into a sparking cyclone. "You're trying to reconcile a two year gap in your head. I get that. But you can't come back and act like my world's been on pause too."

"I'm—" For the sake of her composure and his, he stopped another apology. "I didn't mean to…"

"You did. I don't think you realized" Her sentiments aren't manufactured to manipulate, to produce an exact reaction for the benefit of her aim. Thoughts arise, submit to the machine of her programmed, tactical mind for processing, then emerge with little modification. This is her truth. "The world's kept moving. Something breaks, and we have to fix it — even when some guys in suits try to obstruct us. We've adapted. We work under the grid. It sounds liberating, but the reality is that we're more restricted than ever." Her fingertips are numb; it's as though they've disappeared while resting at her side, and that sensation reminds her all too strongly of disintegration. A shudder reminds her she isn't ash. Not yet.

Quieter, but nonetheless firm, she tells him, "I can't run anymore."

That's it. Two years of waiting at a close. She can leave, regardless of what he does, and figure out a way to remedy the fractured universe. There's nothing else for her. It's time to stow the fantasy of getting the guy and retiring to blissful mundanity.

Retiring now is synonymous with death. There is no personal for her anymore. It's about the mission — _she_ is the mission. That means no longing, no what-if contemplating, no regard for his devastation that cracks him like ancient marble. That means walking out and not looking back. She could do that; she's absolutely capable and well practiced in the craft of stoicism.

She doesn't want to this time.

"I wanted…" A tendency to overanalyze causes him to stop, start again. "I've been selfish, and that's unfair to you. I don't want to run. I don't want _you_ to run. Well — in a way, I do, because I don't want to see you hurt, or…"

"It's not your job to protect me." _I don't expect it,_ she keeps that part to herself, flinching at it as though it was an electric shock.

"I know. Trust me, I do." His voice is a chalice full of faith and lament. "You, not _you_ — the team — you need the other guy. But I can't. He was in control for so long, and now he's hiding in Thanos's shadow."

Some men — a lot of men — no matter how brilliant, just didn't excel in decoding social cues and crypt. "When a city was falling and the planet was about to implode, we needed him," she spells it out for him. "We've lost now. I don't need him."

His attempts to calculate display freely on his expression. "What do you need?"

"You're asking the wrong questions, doc."

The second attempt is better. "...what do you want?"

Not great, but it's progress. "I'm here." _I'm still here._ When she could've walked out a dozen times, decided against this in the first place, she chose to come, to stay in this new space of his. "You really have to ask?"

"Do you want me to leave?"

That nearly gets a laugh out of her. The chuckle she can suppress, but not the small grin; that, she permits through. "Is it really that hard to understand?" She reminds him, "Besides, this is your room."

"Oh." That fact genuinely hadn't occurred to him. He has to relearn ownership of his body, a place for him — something she was never afforded and maybe never will be. That's why he offers what should be his so freely. It's kind, but returned to him for lack of fulfillment. She watches him as he tries to fathom what else — out of everything she has seen in him — that he could possibly offer. Once again, he can't identify his own reflection. "I don't know. I really don't. Everything I do — everything I know — it feels like a question."

"It's horrible, isn't it?"

As a constricted laugh slips out of him, she deconstructs her tightly wound fugitive's posture and crosses the space between them.

He doesn't question her now, doesn't pull away. His exhale turns into her inhale, the thing that keeps her upright as she allows wisps of whim to seep in. Their torchlight essences had danced around her for so long, dangled above her like cursed stars when she laid down. Finally, she lets them in. Not without a wrench of guilt, she thinks of Wanda, who had so many cycles of night and day with Vision. They had a bed, a space — their space. He had her pulse under his fingers, she kept his voice close to her ear, and they would share musings and admiration in their sanctum. They documented the history of them solely in each other.

Two years of whims. She's so tired.

"Be there when I wake up." The whims weave together in a murmur that hangs between them, then dissipates.

"What?" He, too, whispers.

They're suspended somewhere outside of Wakanda, between the genocide and revival, where she can ask for this without shame. "That's what I want."

Even if it's only for a night, she wants the bed, the space, his pulse and his voice. It's not an attempt to reverse time, nor is it a new beginning. It's a collection of scarce hours, wherein he slides a hand around her upper arm, which she takes and uses to lead him to the place where they lay. She doesn't ask him of what he doesn't remember, and he doesn't pry into matters involving Bucky, the Sokovia Accords, and so much more that remains an enigma to him. This isn't a time for debriefing or catch-up.

They angle toward one another, unconnected until her fingertips venture to the line of his chin, where bone rests just beneath the skin. In the quiet, she comes to settle in the crater between the dual sides of his collarbone. He takes his cues from her, welcomes the silence between conversation and sleep. As their moments drip away like sand through an hourglass, he tries to outlast her wakeful state, to keep watching her, fixating on her breath as her fingers track his.

In the end, it is Bruce who succumbs first. That much is evident in the slack of his jaw and unwinding of his brow. When twilight fades, she's the first to wake from blissfully vacant visions, her head having found the place where his heartbeat thrums in her ear — their space.


End file.
